Building the Case for IA

Jane McConnell, moderator of the Information Architecture track, gleefully warns Lou Rosenfeld and Christopher Harris-Jones that she’ll pull the plug on the microphone if they exceed their time limits!

Lou Rosenfeld keynoted the Information Architecture track this morning with a passionate, but reasoned argument for the viability and importance of information architects, especially in enterprise and government environments. Describing them as “information therapists” or new “information integrators,” Lou sees information architects as librarians of the new age – who may not be especially entrepreneurial, but who enjoy organizing information, and are seeing growing opportunities.

Many of his comments were based on a survey of the profession and its prospects that he conducted earlier this fall. The results and related comments can be found on his blog.

Bottom line, Lou is optimistic about the prospects for information architects and for the profession, but in the next breath admits there may still be a debate in some quarters as to whether IA is “real” or not. However, I suspect that by the end of today’s track on IA, attendees at this conference will harbor few doubts.